The End of African Socialism

About the Author

By George B.N. Ayittey In most places in Africa, telephones
don't work; they bite back. What are called "roads" are cartways
truncated with crevasses large enough to swallow a truck. Vehicles
move in a crab-like fashion: pointing sideways but moving perfe c
tly straight. These, in shor4 are a few of the manifestations of
the deepening crisis gripping Africa. Once a region with bountiful
stores of optimism and hope, the African continent now teeters
perilously on the brink of economic disintegration, politica l
chaos, and institutional and social decay. The decline in income
per capita has been calamitous for many African countries.
Agricultural growth has been dismal, with output growing at less
than 1.5 percent since 1970. Industrial output across Africa has a
lso been declining, with some regions experienc- ing
de-industrialization. Export volumes for many African countries
have faltered, leading to a fall in Africa's share of world markets
by almost hal To maintain income and investment, African
governments b o rrowed heavily in the 1970s. Total African foreign
debt has risen nineteen-fold since 1970 to a staggering $230
billion, equal to its Gross National Product (GNP), making the
region the most heavily indebted of all (Latin America's debt
amounts to around 6 0 percent of GNP). Debt service obligations
absorbed 47 percent of export revenue in 1988, but only half were
actually paid. The arrears are constantly being rescheduled. With
scarce foreign exchange increasingly being devoted to service debt
obligations, less became available for imports of spare parts,
drugs, textbooks, and other essential supplies. Infrastructure
began to crumble for lack of maintenance. Roads started to
deteriorate and telephones refused to work. Even hospitals in many
African countrie s had no running water. At the Akomfo Anokye
Hospital in Ghana, patients were asked to bring their own bandages,
blankets, and food. "Harvard" in Ruins. Educational facilities soon
began to disintegrate. Makerere Univer- sity in Uganda, once called
"The Ha r vard of Africa," is now in total ruins. The University of
Ghana at Legon, once a world-class institution, has not seen a
single coat of fresh paint since the colonialists left in the
fifties. In sub-Saharan Africa (or black Africa), the economic
deteriora t ion has been so severe that this region now has the
dubious distinction of being home to 24 of the world's 36 poorest
nations. Economic performance of this region, measured crudely by
the rate of growth of income per capita, has been pathetic, as the
foll owing table indicates:

G eorge B.N Ayittey, a native of Ghana, is a Bradley Resident
Scholar at the Heritage Foundation. He spoke at The Heritage
Foundation on January 24, 1990. ISSN 0272-1155. 01990 by The
Heritage Foundation.

The overall picture is even more depressing when compared to the
performance of other rqgions. of the Third World. Social and
economic indicators of development, such as output growth, health,
and literacy, have shown persistently wea k performance in black
Africa. For example, black Africa's rate of growth of GDP per
capita for the two periods, 1965-1987 and 1980-1988, were 0.6 and
-2.5. For Asia, these were 4.0 and 5.5, whili those for Latin
America and the Caribbean were 2.1 and-0.6 . While all other
regions of the Third World advanced, black Africa retrogressed. The
exceptions to the general economic atrophy in black Africa have
been few. Botswana continues to serve as a shining black success
story, followed by Mauritius and Cameroon while Senegal struggles
to keep its head above water. In the early 1980s, Ivory Coast and
Kenya were members of this select club, but now suffer from serious
economic crises. The worst performers have been Ethiopia, Ghana,
Liberia, Mozambique, Niger, Nige r ia, Sao Tome and Principe,
Sudan, Uganda, Zaire and Zambia - all of which are characterized by
civilian or military dictatorships. Worse than at Independence.
Back in the 1960s, euphoria punctuated much of Africa. Freedom had
been won; the colonial "infid e ls" had been driven out of Africa.
There was a perfervid desire to prove to the "racists" that Africa
too was capable of charting its own. course in its own image. But
today most Africans are worse off than they were at inde- pendence.
What happened? The n ew leaders faced the daunting task of
developing Africa and delivering the goods to their people. There
was widespread belief among African leaders, intellectuals, and
even American development experts that the state had to assume a
predominant role in ec o nomic development. It was argued that
markets were underdeveloped; infrastructural facilities were
inadequate; capital or funds were insufficient; the middle class
was non-exis- tent; the colonial economic structure had to be
transformed, and so forth. Af r ica could not rely on free markets
and private enterprise. The state had to spearhead economic
develop- ment. U.S. AID, the State Department, and even development
experts from Harvard University supported these arguments and
channelled much aid resources to African governments.

2

To initiate development, it was widely held that the state
needed wide-ranging powers to marshall resources. Extensive powers
were conferred upon African heads of state. Other heads simply
arrogated unto themselves additional po wers. If a piece of land
was needed for highway construction, it was simply appropriated by
the state. In this way, all African governments, regardless of
their professed ideology, came to assume immense powers. Socialist
vs. Capitalist Route. It can be a r gued justifiably that they
indeed needed these powers to spur development. But almost
everywhete'-thd mistake or pernicious oversight was the failure to
attach countervailing checks or safeguards to prevent the abuse of
those powers. That failure led to t h e rise of tyranny in Africa.
There are tyrannical regimes on both the left and the right. But
the leftist ones are more numerous since most African countries
took the "socialist"' route after independence. A few countries
such as Ivory Coast, Kenya, Malaw i , and Senegal went the
"capitalist" route. In many places in Africa, capitalism was
identified with colonialism, and since the latter was evil and
exploitative so too was the former. Socialism, the antithesis of
capitalism, was advocated as the only road t o Africa's prosperity.
The socialist ideology, copied from the East, was widely adopted,
and in its wake followed economic atrophy, repression, and dic-
tat6rship. This process began in Ghana, the first black African
country to gain its independence from B ritain on March 7,1957,
under Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, who is generally regarded as "the father
of African socialism." After independence, he faced herculean
tasks. He had declared in the 1950s, "We shall not rest content
until we demolish this miserable struct u re of colonialism and
erect in its place veritable paradise." Independence had been
achieved. The question was how to build that paradise. Nkrumah
urged Ghanaians to know their "enemy," which was "collective
imperialism in which the USA occupies a leading position." He also
exhorted his fellow Africans to beware of a number of imperialist
dogmas: "that western democracy and the parliamentary system are
the only valid ways of governing; that capitalism, free enterprise,
free competition, etc., are the only e conomic systems capable of
promoting development." These were fallacies, Nkrumah asserted.
African "Isms." Socialism, therefore, was to be his ideology. His
choice of socialism was "based on the belief that only a socialist
form of society can assure Ghan a of a rapid rate of economic
progress without destroying that social justice, that freedom and
equality, which are a central feature of our traditional way of
life." Many other African leaders followed suit. While President
Kaunda of Zambia was espousing " humanism," Nyerere of Tanzania was
instituting " Ujaama, " drawing vague references from the African
tradition of 66socialism." In Africa, socialism was implemented
through the one-party state apparatus. The state would "own
everything" and direct economi c activity (dirigstne). There would
be only one political party. The head of that party would also be
the president - for life. Clearly, any in- dividual with ambitious
political designs and lust for personal power would be seduced by
such a system. Accord ingly, under Nkrumah socialism as a domestic
policy was to be pursued toward "a complete ownership of the
economy by the state." A bewildering array of legislative con-

3

trols and regulations were imposed on imports, capital
transfers, industry, wages, the rights and powers of trade unions,
prices, rents, and interest rates. Some of the controls were in-
troduced by the colonialists, but they were retained and expanded
by Nkrurnah. Private businesses were taken over by the Nkrumah
government and nationa l ized. Numerous state enterprises were
acquired. March Toward Dictatorship. Nkrumah was in a hurry to
transform Ghana into a socialist state. "We must achieve in
A-decade what it took others A'cenftify," he asserted. He was in-
tolerant of criticism. Oppos i tion members were traduced in the
media as the "party of divisiveness" bent on a course of deliberate
sabotage of Ghana's construction efforts. They were to be
eliminated. Accordingly in July 1958, Nkrumah passed the Preventive
Detention Bill, which gave h is government sweeping powers "to
imprison without trial, any person suspected of activities
prejudicial to the state's security." With this vague definition,
anybody could be picked up since any private activity could be
interpreted as prejudicial to the interests of the state. Ile
insidious march toward dictatorship thus began. The news media next
came under the complete control of Nkrumah's party. Journalists
were gagged, censorship established, and editors who criticized the
government were hauled off to jail. Any opposition to Nkrumah's
dictatorship was brutally suppressed. Final- ly in 1964, Nkrumah
declared Ghana to be a one-party state and himself "president-for-
life."

Ghanaians soon tired of Nkrumah and his rhetoric. In 1966 when
he was overthrown in a military coup, there was much joy and
jubilation in the streets of Ghana. His "socialist" ex- periment
was a miserable fiasco. Worse, his ideology had degenerated into
"Swiss bank soci a lism." While he was preaching socialism, his
ministers were busy importing Mercedes Benzes and gold beds into
Ghana and stashing millions into Swiss bank accounts. Back in 1962,
a member of Ghana"s National Assembly, B.E. Kusi, excoriated these
so-called s ocialists: Many children go about in the streets
because they cannot get accommodation in secondary schools, while
those ministers who are in charge of the money send their children
to international schools and to university. Most of them ride in
Mercedes Benz 220s and yet call themselves socialists. This is very
bad. If we want to build a socialist country, then we must let the
president know that we are serious about the use of public funds
and that we do not pay mere lip service to socialism. Ghana's Di s
aster. When Ghana gained its independence, it boasted foreign
exchange reserves of $400 million. In 1966, there was a foreign
debt of $858 million in its place. The state farms Nkrumah set up
could not produce enough food to feed their own workers, let al o
ne the nation. Between 1960 and 1966, food shortages appeared and
local food prices doubled. Ghanaians were suffering. Nkrumah's
policies were emulated by many African countries. Predictably, in
one country after another, economic ruin, dictatorship and o
ppression followed with deadly consistency: Angola, Guinea,
Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Mozambique, Zambia, and now Zimbabwe.

4

State-Sector Albatross. By 1980, almost every African economy
was dominated by one large sector - the state sector - created by a
maz e of laws, controls, and regulations. Public sector
expenditures in 1986 were more than 27 percent of GNP, compared
with only 19 percent in low-income countries outside Africa. The
state sector had become an albatross, characterized by a huge civil
servic e , overlapping bureaucracies, stifling red tape, hideous
waste and corruption, and hopelessly inefficient state enterprises
(SEs). Many of these enterprises were acquirad-haphazardly-with
little planning and foresight-and overstaffed with party
functionari e s. In the early 1980s, there were more than 3,200 SEs
in Africa whose collective perfor- mance was nothing short of the
scandalous. A state-run shoe factory inTanzania continues to
operate at no more than 25 percent of capacity. Here are some other
exampl e s: * For 14 months, from November 1978 to January 1980,
the State Jute Bag Factory in Ghana was closed due to a shortage of
raw materials. Yet the 1,000 workers received full pay for the
entire period of closure. * In Niger, the cumulative deficit of 23
l o ss-making SEs exceeded 4 percent of Niger's Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) in 1982. * InTanzania, between 1976 and 1979, one
third of all SEs were losing money. * InTogoland, the losses of
just eight SEs reached 4 percent of GDP in 1980 while in Ghana 75
pe r cent of SEs made losses. Many of the SEs were set up with
foreign loans and aid. But in many cases, the invest- ment decision
was poorly appraised and riddled with graft and corruption. For
instance, a cement plant serving Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Togo was
closed in 1984 after only four years in operation. A 1987
evaluation of rural development projects in Africa financed by the
World Bank revealed that half had failed. After Somalia built a
plant to box bananas in 1976, it was discovered that the productio
n level needed for the plant to break even ex- ceeded the national
banana production. In 1975, Tanzania built a $2.5 million
semi-automat- ic bakery in Dar-es-Salaam with Canadian aid. But
there was no flour to make bread. When Ghana's state-owned Sugar Fa
c tory at Asutsuare was built, it stood idle for more than a year
because somebody forgot to include a water supply system. Ghana's
state-owned ship- ping line, Black Star Line, had so many redundant
employees that 254 workers were paid for three years (198 1 -1984)
to simply stay home. Railways in Shambles. The railways,
state-owned, which were once the backbone of Africa's
transportation system, are now in shambles. Between 1985-87, only
two black African railways out of 22 derived any modest financial
surpl u s. In 1985, out of nine rail- ways for which reliable data
sare available, one had operating costs of 90 percent, another, 50
percent of revenue. Ghana Railways used to carry 2.6 million tons
of freight in the early 1970s but only 0.4 million tons by the m
iddle of the 1980s. Nigeria Railways lost 33 percent of traffic
from 1979 to 1986. In Sudan, 40 percent of exports were carried by
rail in 1980 but by 1986, the railway's share had fallen to 5
percent. Staff costs of railways absorb up to 75 percent of re
venue in some cases. Nigerian Railways for example had six times
the staff per traffic unit of European Railways in 1987.

5

The civil service is one segment of the state sector that has
experienced the most phenomenal growth. In Ghana, the civil service
increased at a rate five times the growth of the labor market - 14
percent each year between 1975 and 1982. In7beGambia, the civil
service doubled between 1974 and 1984. By 1986, Guinea's 75,000
civil servants' wages ac- counted for 50 percent of current e
xpenditures. In the Central African Republic, civil ser- vice
salaries absorbed 63 percent of current revenues. More than 20
percent of Ghana's civil servants weredeclared superfluous. In
February.1987, some 30 percent of the staff in all the ministries i
n Sierra Leone were considered useless. Cleaning House. Reform of
the hideously inefficient state sector began in the latter part of
the 1960s when the military seized power and threw out kleptocrats.
The soldiers em- barked on a "house-cleaning" drive to i nject
discipline and efficiency into the public sector. Many Africans
applauded enthusiastically. The military also claimed they needed
even greater political powers for "house-cleaning," national
"redemption," and "reconstruction." Constitutions were sus p ended,
curfews were imposed, political parties and associations
proscribed, etc. 1-he -military regimes did not ask for these
powers; they simply usurped them. But all these were exercises in
futility. First, since there were no checks or safeguards, the m
ilitary too abused their powers. As Lord Acton once observed,
"Power tends to corrupt and ab- solute power corrupts absolutely."
Second, the military itself succumbed to the sweet taste of power
and overstayed its welcome. In most countries, they turned o u t be
far worse than the civilian governments they replaced. They looted
national treasuries with "discipline" (Liberia, Nigeria, and Zaire)
and ruined one African economy after another with brutal "ef-
ficiency" (Benin, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Soma l ia, and
Uganda). A new breed of "dedicated" military officers, such as
Rawlings of Ghana and Sankara of Burkina Faso, emerged and
overthrew the corrupt stratocrats. But this new breed was not
significantly better. They resorted to draconian measures, stri n
gent controls, and harsh en- forcement as if more of the wrong
medicine would cure the patient. By 1984, the situation had become
hopeless. Economic Restructuring. In a rare moment of courage and
forthrightness, African leaders admirably admitted before t h e
1986 United Nations Special Session that defective policies and
economic mismanagement were also significant in precipitating the
crisis. Sub- sequently, economic reform and restructuring programs
were drawn up and courageously implemented. By the end o f 1988,
more than half of the black African nations had signed a Structural
Adjustment (SA) agreement with the IMF and the World Bank.
Typically, an SA agreement provides loans to a developing country
to revamp its economy and re-orient it toward greater r e liance on
markets and private sector participa- tion. Such programs entail
sale of inefficient state enterprises, removal of price controls,
ex- change rate devaluation, and a dismantling of the state
interventionist behemoth. A few of the reforming count r ies, such
as Ghana, Malawi, and Tanzania have shown impressive results. For
example, Ghana, after years of economic decline, has registered a
stellar 6.2 percent annual rate of GDP growth over the last four
years. Overall, however, the ex- perience with e conomic
restructuring in black Africa has been disappointing. Controversy
erupted when an April 1989 World Bank study concluded that "strong
reformine' countries had raised their GDP growth on average from
1.2 percent a year to 3.8 percent between

6

19 80-1984 and 1985-1987, whereas growth in non-reforming
countries had risen only from 0.7 percent to 1.5 percent. The
Economic Commission for Africa, a United Nations agency, using the
same figures, reached the opposite conclusion: that the
strong-reformin g economies actually shrank by 0.5 percent a year
between 1980 and 1987, whereas weak reformers grew by 2 percent and
non-reformers by 3.5 percent. Whatever the conclusion, the
controversy only served to heighten skepticism about the efficacy
of the Struct u ral Ad- justment (SA) in reversing the economic
slide of Africa. Structural Adjustment Flaws. Western governments
may think economic restructuring supported with generous loans will
save Africa. But Western taxpayers should demand bet- ter uses of
their m o ney. In most cases in Africa, SA amounted to reorganizing
a bankrupt company and placing it, together with massive infusion
of new capital, in the hands of the same incompetent managers who
ruined it in the first place. Second, SA assumes that development
takes place in a vacuum. Never mind senseless civil wars,
environmental degradation, infrastructural deterioration, a
generalized state of violence and terror in Africa. These
supposedly have no effect on economic development. In Mozambique,
for example, t he twelve-year-old civil war has cost at least $8
billion and ah"estimated 900,000 civilian lives. Over a third of
its population have been displaced. Nor do other features of the
policy environment matter: despotism, perverted systems of
priorities that s tress prestigious projects, arrogant
incompetence, a generally dysfunctional perspicacity of the process
of economic development, and naked looting by "Swiss bank
socialists." Third, economic reform without a concomitant political
reform is meaningless si n ce economic reform under dictatorships
is generally not sustainable. Black Africa is charac- terized by
dictatorships or weak authoritarian regimes that maintain their
authority through personalistic patron-client relations. (Of the 45
black African count r ies, only four - Botswana, Mauritius,
Senegal, and arguably The Gambia - allow their people the right to
vote and choose their leaders.) These relationships are prone to
sudden and erratic chan- ges, producing political instability.
Africa's own history r e veals that this instability impedes the
correction of structural imbalances. It is no wonder that its
record of economic reform has been spotty. Saving Regimes. The sad
truth is that African governments restructure not to save their
economies but their re g imes. Further, restructuring proceeds in
cycles: aborted when the crisis abates and reinstated upon
reemergence (Sudan, Equatorial Guinea, Zaire, Liberia). Even during
restructuring, measures are often implemented perfunctorily without
the con- viction an d the dedication needed to carry them through.
In many cases, public confidence in the program was shattered by
government dishonesty and tomfoolery. For example, believing that
economic development occurs in a vacuum, the Marxist government of
An- gola dr e w up a grandiose Investment Code (Law 13/1988) to
attract foreign investors. Even the West Aftica magazine was
perplexed: "Why should the foreign investor put money into
agriculture, trade or manufacturing in war-torn Angola (or much
less Ethiopia, Mozamb i- que, Somalia, Sudan or Uganda) when a host
of apparently stable, structurally-adjusting African countries (or
better yet, Asian and now Eastern European countries) offer oppor-
tunities in the same sector and more?" (March 13-19, 1989; p.
407).

7

In S ierra Leone, President Momoh declared to Parliament on June
2,1989, that austerity and self-sacrifice must prevail - but not
for his government. Urge, uncontrollable expendi- ture items had
rendered the budget meaningless. "He explained that the governmen t
had continued to fund its activities by printing money, spending in
excess of tax revenue, and borrowing from the Central Bank, while
the nation's meager resources were used for im- ports that were
irrelevant to the needs of the economy" (WestAfrica, Jun e 12-18,
1989, p. 958). Incongruous Actions. In Ghana, the military
government declared its willingness to allow private sector
participation in the economy after decades of socialist management
and ruin. But its actions proved incongruous with its pronoun c
ements. The commercial properties of burgeoning indigenous
entrepreneurs were arbitrarily seized without due process of law.
Three such cases were reported in 1989. In one case involving Dr.
Kwame Safo-Adu, an African Development Bank and World Bank credi t
facility was secured to establish a pharmaceutical factory at
Kumasi that employed about thirty Ghanaians. Strangely perceived as
a political threat, his home was at- tacked by two brigades of
military personnel in February 1988. Both groups were disguis e d
-as@"afmed robbers" and apparently mistaking the other as real
robbers, shooting erupted be- tween them. Before it was over, two
of them lay dead. Subsequently on November 3, 1989, the
pharmaceutical factory was cordoned off and closed by a battalion
of 400 armed soldiers. Ghana, incidentally, has also drawn up an
elaborate Investment Code to attract foreign in- vestors with
guarantees that their commercial properties will be safe. It is
also the same country whose economic reform program is being touted
by the World Bank as "the role model for all of Africa."
InTanzania, ex-president Julius Nyerere continues his frontal
attacks on the SA program, sowing confusion and much uncertainty.
After ruining the Tanzanian economy with "Qjaama" socialism, he
"retir e d" to be the chairman of Tanzania's ruling and sole legal
party, Chama cha Mapindzi (CCM). In July 1988, the Tanzanian
government under Mwinyi licensed six private companies to set up
breweries. Here, too, private sector participation was to be
allowed to break the decades-old state monopoly on breweries in a
restructuring program. But after some of the companies had
conducted feasibility studies and arranged financing, the industry
and trade minister suddenly abrogated the licenses, claiming that
the priv a te breweries would falsify output data and evade taxes.
Dictator Bailouts. These inconsistencies and policy acrobatics have
done a great deal to spell doom for structural adjustment in most
parts of black Africa. Blacknost has proven to be noperestroika. I
n fact, by 1988 the Nigerian newspaper, National Concord, had
written an obituary on structural adjustment midway through its
country's program, claiming its opera- tion has in some very
critical respects been flawed (June 30, 1988). Furthermore it
seemed , where adopted, SA rather served to impede the
democratization process by bailing out failed dictatorships.
Writing in New Affican (November 1988; p.47), Stephen Duah stated
with elegant simplicity: "If Western governments and the IMF would
stop giving lo ans to dictators in (Africa), they would not survive
to terrorize their nations, let alone extend their acts into the
international arena."

8

Breaking Taboos. Recognizing the futility of loans solely to
support economic restructur- ing, the World Bank, w hich
characteristically refrains from political commentaries,
courageously broke its own taboos. In its new Report (Sub-Saharan
Aftica: From Crisis to Sustainable Growth, November 1989), it
ventured into sacred territory by berating corrup- tion, patronag e
, and waste that stymie development and stressed the creation of
"an ena- bling environment." "Ultimately, better governance
requires political renewal," the Report said. Without "political
renewal" in the 1990s, Africa will be abandoned for greater empha s
is on Eastern Europe. It is true a few African countries attempted
"political renewal" and reform in the 1980s. But much of it was a
performance of the "Unin boogie": one step for- ward, two steps
back, a sidestep, and a flip to land at the same place as b efore.
In 1988, for example, Kenya's only legal party, the Kenya African
National Union (KANU) suddenly "reformed" its political system by
adopting a peculiar system of voting. Prospective candidates - only
life-members of KANU were allowed - had to be cl e ared by local
branch committees before they could stand for elections. .
-Onzlection day, candidates put up their pictures in the voting
areas and voters, who must also be KANU members, "voted" by
queueing behind the portraits of their chosen can- didates . For
their "votes" to be valid, they had to stay in line from 12:00 noon
till 6:00 pm when the polls closed. Those not wanting to line up
had to stay 100 meters away from the polling station. Professionals
and businesspersons were effectively disenfranchi s ed by this
absurd "democratic" system. In Nigeria, preparations feverishly
began in 1987 to return the country to civilian rule in 1992. A
constitution was drafted under the watchful eyes of omniscient
soldiers, and by a 1989 military decree only two part i es - the
Social Democratic Party and the National Republican Convention
-will be allowed to exist. To give more substance to this form of
democracy by flat, the military government went further and drew up
the constitutions and manifestos of the two parti e s it had
created. Exams for Politicians. Much effort and emphasis were
placed on "educating" civilians on how to rule themselves. A Center
for Democratic Studies (CDS) was established for this purpose, and
its director, Professor Omo Omoruyi, disclosed th a t aspiring
politicians win have to pass two examinations for certificates
leading to "competence in the Nigerian Con- stitution" before they
can hold public offices. "There must be a way of ascertaining
whether they know how Nigeria is governed," he expla i ned.
Naturally, there will be no such certifi- cates for aspiring
military heads of state, despite the fact that the military has
held power for twenty out of thirty years of Nigerian independence.
(In Benin, Congo, Ghana, Somalia, Togo, Uganda and Zaire, the
military has ruled much longer than civilians). Meanwhile in Ghana,
elections were held in earnest from October 1988 to February 1989
in the country's 110 newly-created districts to institute what was
officially dubbed as "par- ticipatory democracy." C andidates had
to have their "revolutionary credentials" vetted by the
government-appointed Electoral Commission. In addition, the
government reserved to itself the right to appoint a full third of
the representatives of the District Assemblies. This "gras s-roots"
democratic system in Ghana was drawn up with the assistance of a
Bul- garian expert in 1988. There were no provisions for national,
or even regional, elections.

9

Nor were such issues publi cly entertained. Participation in the
decision-making process was to occur only at the district level.
Ghanaians, by implication, were not yet ready to choose their heads
of state in national elections. One would think that black African
leaders who rail a bout "freedom," "majority rule, and "one man,
one vote" themselves understand what these concepts mean. If a
Kenyan or Ghanaian had challenged these infantile "democratic"
exercises, he would have been rewarded with a jail term or death.
But if Pretoria h a :d'de7clardd South Africa a one-party state and
insisted that blacks vote by queueing behind portraits of
candidates; or had decreed that only two black political parties,
of its own choice and manufacture, would be allowed to exist in the
post-apartheid e ra; or had insinuated that blacks were not yet
ready to choose their president in national elections; or that
blacks must be "educated" and must pass two examinations to
ascertain whether they know how South Africa is governed before
holding public office s, the governments of Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria
and Zambia would have leapt 4,000 feet into the air to denounce
these measures vehemently as racist arrogance and a palpable
effrontery to black Africans.

.....Recovering a Lost Legacy

To survive in the 1990s, A frica needs to take a quantum leap
back to its own indigenous political and economic roots. It is true
that in the native system of government, the African chief rules
for life, but he is appointed with the advice and consent of the
Queen Mother and the C o uncil of Elders. He does not appoint
himself. There is a fundamental difference. Nobody just gets up and
declares himself "chief-for-life" and his village to be "a
one-party state" in indigenous Africa. Most African societies have
a Queen Mother whose dut y is to select a candidate and present him
or her to the Council of Elders for approval. This Council is a
representative body made up of the heads of the various extended
families in the community. The families choose their own heads.
Among the Asante of G hana, the Queen Mother has three chances to
produce an acceptable candidate or else the Council makes the
choice itself. The Igbo of Nigeria has no Queen Mother but any
prominent person can seek to become a headman or ward chief. The
chief rules as long a s his people allow it. Sanctions can be
brought against any chief who flouts the will of his people. He is
first admonished privately by his advisers and then publicly. If he
persists, his people can resort to several remedies. The Igbo,
people go on a vil l age strike, bringing life to a halt. That
usually forces the authorities to mend their ways. In other
societies, the people simply abandon their chief and move
elsewhere. The history of Africa is full of migrations of people to
escape oppression. Nobody l o ves freedom and in- dependence more
than African natives. That explains why there are more than 2,000
dif- ferent tribes in Africa today. Rather than submit to despotic
rule, the natives moved some- where else to preserve their culture
and independence. T h is course of action is still evidenced today
by Africa's growing number of refugees. In other tribes, an erring
chief or king is simply "destooled" (removed). According to the
Ghanaian historian, Dr. Kwame Arhin: "The people of Asante
destooled three king s in 1799, 1874 and 1883. They destooled Osei
Kwame in 1799 for absenting himself from Kumasi and failing to
perform his religious duties during the Adae festival. They
destooled

10

Karikari in 1874 for extravagance. They destooled Mensa Bonsu in
1883 for excessively taxing his people." With the Asante,
divestiture proceedings begins when disaffected members of the com-
munity file grievances against the king before the council. The
king is given the opportunity to defend himself. If found at fault,
he is asked to pay mpata, a pacification fee. If the ag- grieved
party refuses to accept this, the king is "destooled." The Yoruba,
however, remove their ona differently by a process known as
Air&bi. If he is incompetent or abuses his power, a mob will
surro u nd his residence, loudly abusing him and pelting his hut
with rocks. He would be given three months to leave the village. If
he refuses, then a select band of men would seize him and dispose
of him. The Gikuyu of Kenya remove their rulers by a process kno w
n as itwika - a genuinely indigenous African people's revolution.
Decision by Consensus. In governance, the chief and his councillors
sit under a tree and debate issues until they reach unanimity. Any
adult can participate in council meetings, called inda b a among
the Zulu of South Africa. One does not have to belong to any par-
ticular one-party state to participate. In 19th century Angola, the
African king, Alfonso, al- lowed the Portuguese merchants to send
their own representative to his court. The Asan t e 6flGhafta Also
permitted foreign representation. No one was "locked out"' of the
political decision-making process. Even slaves could also
participate. In Senegal, slaves, djarn, elected their own
representative to the king's court. In most places in tr a ditional
Africa, slavery as a social class was of no economic consequence.
Slaves could own property and had full political rights. In fact,
the JaJa of Bonny of Niger Delta (Nigeria) rose to become king from
a slave origin in the 19th century. In the pol i tical process, if
the chief and the councillors are deadlocked on a verdict, a vil-
lage meeting will be called and the issue placed before the people
for a consensus to be reached. The Khosa of South Africa call one
of these village meetings pitso. When t he colonialists came to
Africa, they did not find a box with "ballot" written on it. Nor
did they find a building with "Congress" or "Parliament" written on
it. So they con- cluded the indigenous African system of government
was "undemocratic" and "despot i c" because the chief ruled for
life. But Chancellor Williams, an African American (or Aferican,
for short), was highly impressed by the Mossi indigenous system in
northern Ghana: "T'heir political system, highly democratic, was
unsurpassed by any state an y where in the world. That system was
developed by Africans." He may have been overly effusive in his
praise. But the fact is Africans had their own indigenous system of
government. They sat under a tree and talked about issues affecting
the community. The E uropeans put up a building and called it
"parliament," which literally means a place to talk. What's the
difference? Africans had participatory democracy which reached a
consensus. The Europeans introduced representative democracy based
on majority vote. N ever mind how 66primitive" or "backward" the
tree but the institution of reaching a consensus was there in
indigenous Africa before the colonialists arrived on the continent.
Hearing Minority Positions. Consensus means that minority positions
are not only heard but also taken into account in the
decision-making process. Majority vote, on the other hand, means
that a minority position can be ignored. Consensus is far more
difficult to reach on many issues, and that was one reason why
African political tradi tion is noted for the length of time; it
took sometimes days - and even weeks - to reach a consensus.
But

11

once reached, there was unity of purpose since all participated
in the decision-making process. Unity was achieved through this
process of cons ensus building. It was not achieved by the chief
demanding blind allegiance to his leadership and the suppression of
alternative viewpoints. All historians, experts and African leaders
agree on this. But then the same leaders fail to realize that
consensu s , by its very nature, is the antithesis of autocracy.
One cannot impose one's will in a system that is traditionally
structured to reach decisions by consensus. Clearly, despotism.
does not inhere in the African political tradition. As the late Dr.
K.A. B u sia, ex-president of Ghana observed: "Authoritarianism
cannot be justified on the basis of African tradition." The African
chief or king is powerless without the council of elders. He cannot
pass any law or reach any decision without their consent. The ch i
ef cannot remove the councillors since they are chosen by the
extended families they represent. Many African leaders such as
Nkrumah and Nyerere also argued erroneously that the in- digenous
African economy was fundamentally "socialist." Socialism, as und e
rstood and practiced, entails government ownership of the means of
production; the operation of state enterprises to the exclusion of
privately-owned businesses; price fixing by the state and a
plethora of state regulations and controls. In other words, t h ere
is an absence of private ownership or property, free enterprise and
free markets. Africa's indigenous economic sys- tem may be
"backward" and "primitive"; but it is not characterized by these
absences and is therefore not "socialism." Controls, Regula t ions
Absent. The means of production in traditional Africa are not owned
by the chief or the tribal government. Certainly, all the cattle in
Zululand do not belong to the Zulu chief. Nor do the huts, hunting
gear, machetes and other agricultural im- pleme n ts, or farm
produce. Even land, erroneously characterized as
"communally-owned," is not owned by the chief. He only holds land
in trust. Every black African will affirm that chiefs do not &
prices on village markets. One bargains over prices. Nor do Afric a
n chiefs operate tribal government enterprises to the total
exclusion of their subjects. Businesses and commercial enterprises
(goldsmiths, bakeries, sculpturing, trade houses) are privately
owned. Africans do not ask for permits from their chiefs to oper a
te them. In fact@ one notable feature of the indigenous African
economic system is the absence oftervasive economic controls and
regulations. So why impose on black Africans an economic system
which is alien to their culture? True, African peasants are co m
munalistic and socialistic in the sense that they pool their
resources together to build and care about their neighbors and
family members. But so, too, do many rural folks in the West who
pool their together to rebuild after a calamity (earthquake, torna
d o, flood). But that hardly makes them "socialists." Communalism
does not necessarily imply communism or socialism. Failure to make
this important distinction led many African leaders and experts
astray. Profit, for example, is not an alien concept to Afri c a.
The Asante call it mfaso. But the traditional practice is to share
it. Under the abusa system of the cocoa farmers of West Africa,
profit is divided into three parts: a third to the workers, another
third to the owner of the farm and the remaining thir d set aside
for farm maintenance and expansion. In the West, profit is
appropriated by capitalists; in the East, by the state. In Africa,
the natives share it in a system which exploited no one. This is
this same profit-sharing scheme that the Japanese suc cessfully
used to engineer their economic miracle. The so-called "backward"
peasants of Africa have been using this scheme for centuries.

12

Misreading Africa. But because profit was shared in Africa, some
Western writers dis- missed African natives as "primitive
communists." And looking at the same scheme, many African leaders
concluded that Africans were ready for socialism. Both groups were
wrong. Instead of copying foreign systems to impose upon their
people, African leaders should build upon their own indigenous
(political and economic) heritage. Black Africans are not lazy or
unresponsive to market incentives. Their indigenous institutions
may be "backward and primitive," but they used these
same-institutions to prosper in the late 19th century. T h e period
1880-1950 stands out in Africa's history as one of unparalleled
peasant economic advancement. During this period, the natives of
Africa proved themselves to be remarkably industrious and
enterprising in spite of their "backwardness" and "primitiv e im-
plements." In his book, 77ze Rise and Fall of the South Aftican
Peasantry, Colin Bundy opens Chapter 3, appropriately titled
"Expansion of the Peasantry: 1870-90," with a letter by Mr. JJ.
Hem- ming in 1881 describing the African natives: All these p e
ople are in the strictest sense agriculturists; I believe there are
but few heads of families in all this large population who are not
cultivators of the soil; they are the largest producers of grain in
the division; without them the trade of Queenstown w o uld not be
anything like what it is at present. It is an indisputable fact
that comparing them with Europeans, taking man for man and acre for
acre, the native produces from a smaller extent of ground, and with
more primitive appliances, more than the Eur o peans. 1 The
industriousness of the Mfengu of South Africa is now legendary. In
1867, according to Bundy, just under 4,000 Mfengu migrated to
Fingoland. Within a year, they chalked up an impressive economic
advance. Percy Nightingale, the Civil Commission e r, was explicit:
It should be conceded that the people in this neighborhood who have
in one year raised 250,820 lbs of wool of a superior quality and
excellent get up, besides 7,484 muids of corn, who attend 77
wagons, which are mostly employed in the tra n sport business, to
say nothing of the labour they undertake ... cannot fairly be
charged en masse with indolence.2 Bundy continued that: From other
Ciskei districts came similar reports of peasant enterprise and
trade. The Civil Commissioner of Peddie wro te in 1875 that 69many
cattle are fattened here for the markets ... Dealers and purchasers
procure large quantities of slaughter animals from this district.
The wheat and other cereals rendered excellent crops." ne

peasants there were "yearly becoming richer, there is an increasi
desire to obtain land." A statistician noted in 1870 th at "taking
everything into consideration, the native district of Peddle
surpasses the European district of Albany in its productive powers
...... What of the land on the other side of the Kei river, in the
Transkei? The Mfengu in "Fingoland" set the pace i n improvements,
enterprise and prosperity..'.An indication of the
c6minunity'sability to generate a surplus, as well as of its
capacity for social change, is the amount of money the Mfengu put
into education and other benefits. In three years they raised 4
,500 pounds sterling for the building of Blythswood, a sister
school to Lovedale; they contributed 7,000 pounds sterling towards
roads through the territory; and paid in addition church and school
fees, as well as taxes and fees levied by the Cape Governm e nt.
The decision to pay a special road levy was agreed to at public
meetings held by the Mfengu, and the opening of the bridge across
the Kei was attended by headmen and other representatives of the
community in demonstration of their application of the a d vantages
of improved transport facilities? Elsewhere on the African
continent, the so-called backward peasants were demonstrating their
industriousness. Cocoa, rubber, tea, coffee, and peanuts were
introduced to them in the 1870s. But within a few decades , the
cash crop industries were experiencing phenomenal booms. Cocoa, for
example, was introduced into Ghana by its native, Tetteh Quarshie,
in 1879 when he planted seeds from pods brought in from Fernando
Po. In 1891, the first shipment of cocoa, weighing just 80 pounds
and valued at a mere four pounds ster- ling was made. In 190 1,
1,000 tons were exported. In 1911, this tonnage rose to 44,450. By
1936, Ghana was the leading world producer of cocoa with an export
volume of 305,000 tons. Similar stunning g r owth rates were
recorded for peanuts, palm oil, cotton, pineapple, and bananas.
This is not "primitive romanticism" but statement of facts. African
natives prospered in the late 19th century because they had
economicfreedom and a peaceful environment. If s o, why then were
they unable to continue prospering into the 1980s? The answer is
obvious: their economic freedom was somehow snatched from them with
misguided policies. Second, peace vanished in most African
countries. Outcompeting Whites. The turnaround came first in South
Africa. Blacks were outcom- peting and outperforming whites,
especially as farmers. As Frances Kendall and Uon Louw observed in
their book, AfterApartheid. The Solution: "White colonists feared
black com- petition, and this fear, combi ned with the white's
desire for cheap black labor, resulted in a series of laws that
systematically denied blacks access to the marketplace and stripped
them of any meaningful form of land ownership."4

In 1869, 1876, and 1884 the Cape Assembly passed a series of
Location Acts (the first set of apartheid laws) to restrict black
enterprise. Then came the Native Land Act of 1913 and the rest of
the story is well known. In black Africa, the turning point came
after independence. The economic freedom of the peasants was
wrenched from them by black "Noriegas" and their economic
prosperity taxed and squandered by vampire elites through various
ideological devices as socialism, Mar- xism, Nkrumaism, Mobutuism,
and other "isms." Colonial Peace. Second, colonialism was
invidious, but one of its little known and acknow- ledged
"benefits" was the peace it brought Africa. Tribal wars a nd
rivalries virtually came to a halt, giving Africa a much needed
atmosphere of peace for productive economic activity. In addition,
skeletal forms of infrastructure (roads, railways, bridges,
schools, post office, etc.,) were laid down during this perio d
that greatly facilitated the movement of goods and people.
Infrastructural development really gave production and economic
expansion a tremendous boost. The secrets of economic prosperity in
Africa are not hard to find. Mere two words unveil ....-them: p e
ace and infrastructure. Now examine the situation which obtains in
Africa today. Today, one does not have tribal wars where peasants,
armed with sticks and spears, slaughter themselves. Rather one has
elite wars, where useless idiots, armed with a few baz o okas, blow
up their countries and people in behalf of foreign ideologies.
Civil wars and political strife rage in at least fifteen African
countries, scattering refugees in all directions and leaving
carnage and human debris littered across Africa. Some o f these
wars have been waged for ten years or more with no end in sight.
Meanwhile, Africa's refugee problem mounts; the count now exceeds
10 million, which excludes those trapped within their own
countries. In Mozambique, for example, the twelve-year old c ivil
war has cost at least $8 bil- lion and an estimated 900,000
civilian lives. Over a third of its people have been displaced. As
the United Nations High Command for Refugees observed recently,
Africa has more than half of the world's refugees. Studies u
ndertaken by the ECA and UNICEF indicate that wars and armed
conflicts in southern Africa cost somewhere between 25 to 40
percent of GDP annually and even greater in Mozambique and Angola.
Military spending has diverted resources from southern Africa's de
velopment and has consumed nearly 50 percent of government expendi-
tures. Exports have suffered throughout the region and import costs
have risen due to dis- ruptions in transport routes.

How Can the West Help?

Taking a lesson from Eastern Europe, it was glasnost (not quiet
diplomacy which found the State Department on the "wrong side" in
Romania) that unleashed the momentous events which toppled
communist dictatorships. Glasnost or openness really meant freedom
of expression and of thought. As people fo u nd that they could
express their ideas and view- points freely, they began to demand
change and a new system. The demands came from within and were not
dictated from the outside. Ideally, the sequence of reform should
run from the intellectual to the poli tical before economic reform.
Only intellectual freedom can establish the free marketplace of
ideas

15

from which political and economic reform can be crafted. The two
great revolutions of the West (American and French) were inspired
by ideas freely es poused and exchanged across the Atlantic by such
intellectual giants as Lafayette, Washington, Jefferson,
Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau, to name a few. In insisting
upon economic reform first, many Western governments and aid
agencies not only scoff a t their own history but also put the cart
before the horse. Intellectual freedom was the key and the trigger
of the episodic events in Eastern Europe. Information Revolution.
There is no such gla@nost in Africa. The media are still control-
led and owned b y the state. Newsprint into much of Africa is
regulated by import licensing. A private newspaper or magazine
which does not toe the government line is either denied import
license or banned. Hundreds of editors, journalists, professors,
and novelists lan- guish in jail for writing something their
governments did not like. The print media are particularly
important in the democratization process. They expose human rights
abuses, corruption, repression, economic mismanagement, and a host
of other ailments of a dictatorship. What is needed in Africa at
this stage is an information revolu- tion that would break
government monopoly over the media. How can the West help? Western
governments and aid agencies could help in the following ways: 1)
The state-owned med i a must be included in the list of state
enterprises slated for sale under SA agreements and newsprint
removed from the list of import-licensed items. In fact, the media
should be the first strategic area to be privatized to give
substance to glasnost. Els e , no SA loan. 2) African governments
must draw up their own restructuring programs and present them to
their people for debate. After all, huge loans will be contracted
on behalf of these people. Why should they be held liable for
foreign loans for which t hey gave no authorization. The World Bank
and the IMF can then accept, reject, or modify the "people's"
program in the light of their objectives. 3) Withhold aid to any
African country where there is on-going civil war. It makes little
sense to supply aid to build bridges and see them blown up by
insurgents. Such aid should be placed in escrow to give combatants
the incentive to resolve differences at the negotiating table.
These are the same leaders calling for a negotiated solution for
South Africa. 4) T h e Brady Plan of partial debt cancellation in
black Africa should be linked to political reform. Indebted African
countries should draw up a program for political reform. Only when
free and fair national elections have been held should any debt be
cancelle d as a goodwill gesture to the newIy-installed civilian
government. Western governments could accelerate the process of
total reform by providing direct aid and credit to private
individuals for the importation of newsprint and the establishment
of newspap e rs, radio stations and telecommunications in Africa.
Any African government that shuts them down would forfeit its own
Western aid. Afericans (African-Americans) can also play a historic
role in this "blacknost revolution" by publicly demanding the
remova l of black "Ceausescus" and "Noriegas" who are chanting
"power and freedom to the people!"

16

The newly-emancipated peoples of Eastern Europe can also be of
especial strategic assis- tance. Their embassies in Africa could
make available to the African people, magazine ar- ticles,
newsclips, TV clips, and radio commentaries of the momentous events
i n their former socialist countries in 1989. Such news was heavily
censored and relegated to small comers of back pages in many
African countries. Better yet, such clips should be placed in all
public and university libraries in Africa as "gifts" from, say the
people of Poland or East Germany. It is instructive to note the
formation of the National Peasants Party in Romania. Real
blacknost, not more aid, is what African peasants need to do the
watusi: one step back, two steps forward, while chanting kiyiAii i,
to their state houses and demand to see their black "Ceausescus"
and "Noriegas."